The Morality of Eating Animals

(Amusing hearted thoughts)

The purpose of this essay is to raise and note some exceptions to the claims of some who strongly promote veganism.

There has been much written about humans eating other animals.  The simpler of the arguments is that the production of animal meat consumes incredible amounts of food which must be grown on large amounts of farm land. 

There is a clear conclusion that, in terms of providing food that humans eat, our farm land would far more productive if we could use the produce of the land directly rather than cycling it through other animals the killing and eating them.  This seems to be a very valid conclusion and is not doubted here.

The topic of this essay concerns the morality of killing sentient beings in order to eat them for our benefit.  Some consider this killing inhumane and morally repugnant.  Some of these claimants want to go so far as to pass laws and prohibit the killing of livestock for food.

These proponents neglect the basic laws of how life on this earth functions and has functioned since almost the beginning of life.

If you propose that it is immoral for humans to kill and eat sentient beings, and must be stopped, then there are some questions to be answered. 

For a very obvious example, have you visited the lions Serengeti?  They kill and eat ungulates such as wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, and pretty much anything they can kill.  And those lions do not kill in what we might call a humane manner.  Are you going to get them to stop killing and begin eating grasses and other vegetation for their substance?

And while you are there, consider the cheetahs, the multitudes and varieties of canines that feed on anything and everything they can kill.  They don’t directly eat any vegetation.

Lets expand the concept to every single animal that eats other animals.

Is it the case that each and every single carnivore is behaving in an immoral manner?

Forcing vegan morality upon these animals is simply not possible.

One obvious concept becomes apparent.  The carnivores don’t know any better and don’t have the capacity to know better.  This makes them exempt questions of morality.  Well, no, not at all.

Presume the lion pride kills a young wildebeest, and let’s identity that animal with the name Tom.  Its mother, Sally, was still providing breast milk when the lions were able to isolate him from the heard and rip him to shreds eating him.  So, consider how Sally feels about Tom’s death.  Now consider how Sally might feel if some humans had captured and kill Tom in order to eat him.  The suggestion is that it makes not one tiny bit of difference to Sally if Tom were killed by lions or by humans.

The conclusion is that the killing of Tom by lions carries exactly the same level of immorality as the killing by humans.  Because we are aware of Tom’s sentience makes us no more or less moral that the lions.  Sally’s son is just as dead.

But this does not stop with the carnivores of the Serengeti.  It extends to every single carnivore on this earth.  An example is the common dragonfly.  It captures its prey on the fly, and doesn’t bother to kill it.  It just starts eating in.  Since its prey flies, its prey has a brain, and therefore, to some significant degree, is sentient.  Who is going to tell the dragonfly they must change their eating habits.

The question goes much deeper than carnivores and their prey.  We concentrate of the prey and being in the concept of sentience.  What is sentience.  There are a variety of definition.  They range from simple to complex.

On the simple side is a dictionary definition:  able to perceive or feel things:

In the complex side some go so far as:  Sentience refers to the capacity to experience sensations and have subjective perceptions about the surrounding world.

(Readers can do the searches for themselves so extensive footnotes are omitted.)

Beginning with the more complex, all animals with a brain have some level of sentience.  The vegan concept is they should not be killed for eating.

But the simple definition of sentient is more challenging, and far more comprehensive:  able to perceive or feel things.

All plants can “feel” the sunlight, and can “perceive” water and nutrients.  They grow roots into where they sense moisture, and extend leaves out to capture sunlight.  Plants respond to their environment.  They sense their environment.  Considering the more simple definition of sentient, plants are sentient.

So, do we have the moral right to kill things that are sentient?  Using that simple definition, we have no choice.